


Blast from the Past

by the_random_writer



Category: Cut & Run - Madeleine Urban & Abigail Roux
Genre: Apologies, Bagels, Bookstores, Gen, Reunions, Snark, Starting Over, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-13
Updated: 2017-08-13
Packaged: 2018-12-14 16:11:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,950
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11786721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_random_writer/pseuds/the_random_writer
Summary: When you own a bookstore, you never know who's going to walk through your door...The character was a bitch, and may not even appear in the revised version of the novel due out in 2018, but I think she was a bit short-changed by the plot, and I love a good redemption arc. If that's not your thing, stop reading now :-)





	Blast from the Past

It was Zane who heard the ding of the bell, all the way from the kitchen at the back of the store.

In hindsight, that was probably for the best. If Ty had been the one in the shop, and Zane the one out buying bagels to go with their morning coffee and tea, Lord only knows how matters would have developed instead.

He glanced at the clock on the wall, muttered a quick but colourful curse and hastily filled his mug to the brim.

The store had only been open for twenty minutes—barely long enough to power up the laptop computer and set the coffee brewer going—but someone was already looking for help. Unfortunately, based on prior experience, providing that help wasn't going to be simple or quick. This early on in the day, it was always a customer on a mission, or someone panic-buying a last-minute gift.

And just his luck that it was him—the not-morning person half of the marriage—who would now have to deal with a difficult or demanding guest. Problems like this were so much easier when Ty handled them instead.

He picked up his mug and headed towards the front of the store. "Be right with you," he hollered out as he moved. Down the hall, past the restrooms, right at the History section, straight through the printed trench of Horror and Crime, then a short home run into the desk.

As the desk (and the customer) came into view, Zane stopped dead in his tracks. All the book stores in all the towns in all the world, and she had to walk into theirs?

She was still slender, still blonde, still immaculately coiffed and dressed in the finest and most elegant clothes, and from what he could see from this angle, still as beautiful as an angel on a summer's day.

On the outside, at least. On the inside, she was pure, unadulterated bitch.

Or at least, she had been eight years ago, the last time he'd seen her in the flesh. The years had changed both him and Ty, and definitely for the better. Perhaps the inexorable passage of time had worked some magic on her as well.

She was standing at a right angle to him, peering at a display of books Ty had assembled a few days before, so she hadn't as yet detected his presence.

He took a deep breath and summoned every sunny, cheerful thought he could find. "Hello, Serena," he said, the tone of his voice friendly and calm, but not exactly effusively warm.

She swivelled sharply, her Louboutins scraping on the floor, her eyes going wide in shock and surprise. The years were beginning to show, but only slightly around the edges in the form of very fine wrinkles and lines.

She was still absolutely gorgeous.

Her cupid's bow mouth, perfectly painted in a beguiling shade of dusky pink, broke into a dazzling smile. "Zane Zachary Garrett," she announced with a breathless laugh, her hand flying up to her throat. "My God, is that really you?"

He spread his arms wide as if to acknowledge a round of applause. "The one and only," he replied with a heart-breaking smile of his own.

For a few moments, they simply stood in awkward silence, both unsure of what to do or say. Then she held her arms out to him, smiled again and took a tentative step. He moved forward, loosely slipped one arm around her (using the other to hold his coffee mug out to the side),patted her gently on the back and held her close just long enough to be polite, then extracted himself and moved away.

He couldn't help but notice how amazing she smelled. She was wearing something light and floral, something that smelled simple and pure, but had probably cost her an arm and a leg.

As he pulled out of the hug, she flashed him a devious smile, seized his left hand and pulled it up, as if she was about to grace his knuckles with a kiss. His confusion receded as he realized she was staring not at his knuckles, but at the tattoo ring around his finger.

"Zane," she started, her smile slowly melting away to be replaced by another look of shock. "Did you get married again?" she asked.

He gave a quick nod. "Yeah, I did," he told her. "We celebrated our third anniversary a few months ago."

She allowed him to reclaim his hand and took a couple of steps back. He almost missed the wounded look that flashed quickly across her face before she gave him another charming smile. "She's a very lucky woman," Serena declared, sounding, for once, as if she actually meant what she said.

Uh oh.

How to respond to a statement like that? Should he even tell her the truth? That he was married, not to a woman, but to another man? And not just _any_ man, but a man she knew and had always despised?

It was strange, really, that his news came as so much of a shock. He and Ty hadn't exactly shouted their relationship upgrade from the roof of the Bureau's Baltimore office, but they hadn't exactly kept it a secret, either. She'd always been a gossip hound, and as far as he knew, she still worked for the FBI.

He gave a mental shrug. The New York office was full of snobs—people who thought a Baltimore posting was the same thing as being sentenced to death—and Serena was the biggest snob of the bunch. Whatever the reason for her ignorance, it was time to bring her up to date.

"Would be more accurate to say he's a lucky guy," he declared.

She furrowed her brows, not quite catching on to what he meant.

"I have a husband, Serena," Zane calmly explained. "Not a wife."

She laughed out loud, whether from shock or outrage or admiration, he couldn't tell. Perhaps all three at the same time.

"You're married to a _man_?" she exclaimed.

"Yes, I am. And very happily at that," he said, adding just enough firmness to make it clear that whatever had happened between them in the past was never, _ever_ going to happen again.

"I honestly don't know what to say," she said, laughing breathlessly again.

"How about congratulations?"

"Oh my God, yes, of course, congratulations," she echoed, leaning in to give him another hug. "That's fantastic, Zane. I know you had a hard time of it after Becky's death, and I'm very happy for you." She cast her eyes around the store. "So this is your place?" she asked.

" _Our_ place," he corrected. "Bought it after we left the FBI." He deliberately used the plural pronoun, eager to see if she would catch the hint.

She narrowed her eyes. "We?" she asked.

Say what you wanted about Serena, for all her faults (and there were many) she was as sharp as the proverbial tack.

Zane nodded. "My husband and I. We met while we were working for the Bureau. When I hit the twenty-year mark, we decided to call it quits, do something less stressful for the rest of our lives."

Not quite true, but she didn't need to know the rest.

"So you met him in the Baltimore office?"

"Yeah."

"Anyone I might know?"

Zane almost laughed. Now wasn't that the sixty-four thousand dollar question? He took a large gulp of his coffee, buying himself a few seconds of silence while he figured out how best to respond.

Before he could say another word, the universe loudly cleared its throat and asked someone to hold its beer.

Right on cue, as if his elegant ears had been burning, Ty burst noisily through the door, carrying a bag of bagels from the bakery at the end of the street. "Hey, babe," he called out, his attention focused on the goods. "They didn't have any wholegrain today, so I got you a multiwheat instead. That okay?" He looked up as he asked his question, and froze as he finally noticed their guest.

Zane had expected anger from Ty, but surprisingly, his husband's face blossomed into a warm (but slightly malicious) smile.

"Well, well, well," the ex-marine drawled, his native accent shining through. "I would say look what the cat dragged in, but my babies both have better sense than to touch something as nasty as _this_."

Serena rounded on Zane, looking equally unimpressed. "You're married to _Grady_?" she almost screeched.

Zane sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. Why did these things always happen at a hellishly early hour of the day, before he was really awake?

"Yes, I'm married to Ty," he said, reminding Serena his partner had a proper name. "He's my husband, and I love him, and I don't really like it when other people criticize him, so either deal with it, or head for the door." His tone was firm and calm but not cruel. There was no need for any of them to be cruel to each other now, not after the passage of so many years.

"So, Serena," Ty said, grinning again. "To what do we owe this thoroughly dubious and unwelcome pleasure?" He extracted a bagel from the bag, lazily bit off a chunk and gave her dagger eyes as he chewed. He looked like a cougar assessing its prey, trying to decide whether to abandon the hunt or slowly move in for the kill.

Serena sighed, looking from one former acquaintance to the other. "I'm looking for a book."

Ty snorted. "Gonna need a bit more information than that, doll face." He gestured at some nearby shelves. "Case you hadn't noticed, Zane and I are _balls_ deep in books."

The tone of his voice made it clear books weren't the only thing.

"A self-help book," Serena admitted, giving her one-time nemesis another glare. Time might eventually heal all wounds, but it certainly didn't get rid of all grudges, especially where these two people were concerned.

"A self-help book, Ty repeated. He turned to his spouse, a mock frown set on his handsome face. "Correct me if I'm wrong, babe, but I'm pretty sure we just sold our last copy of 'How Not To Be A Raging Bitch', right?"

Zane resisted the urge to smack his husband upside the head. It wasn't so much that Ty was wrong; he just wasn't helping the matter at hand.

To say Serena's reaction was unexpected was the understatement of the year. If only because they wouldn't have thought the reaction in question was something she could ever produce.

She burst into tears.

She drew in a racking sob, then clamped a perfectly-manicured hand across her mouth and turned away, obviously horrified by her response.

Ty grimaced and let out a sigh. "I'm sorry," he said to his former colleague. "That was real childish of me, and I shouldn't have said it."

Serena nodded and sniffed. "Not like I ever gave you a reason to like me."

Ty smirked, opened his mouth, thought better of whatever he'd been about to say, closed it again and quietly huffed.

Zane turned to his spouse, gesturing at the brown, paper bag. "Why don't you go toast a couple of those for us?" he said, making it clear it wasn't a choice.

Ty didn't have to be told twice. He gave Zane a curt nod and strode towards the back of the store, the bag of bagels clutched in his hand.

"So what was this book you were looking for?" Zane said to Serena, swiftly steering the conversation onto less awkward ground.

She took a deep breath and flashed him another smile. "It's called The Asshole Survival Guide, and the author's name is Sutton."

"Serena, Serena," Zane murmured, tutting and shaking his head. "You really expect me to believe you don't know how to deal with assholes?" He slipped in behind the front desk and flipped the lid of the laptop open to check if they had the book in stock.

Serena blushed and cleared her throat. "Actually, it's more that _I'm_ the asshole," she confessed.

Zane simply nodded, not quite sure of how to respond. He couldn't quite bring himself to tell her she was, but after everything she had said and done, he couldn't reassure her she wasn't, either.

"It's okay," she quickly added. "I know I am, so I don't expect you to tell me I'm not."

He nodded again. "Well, the first step in fixing any personal problem is admitting you actually _have_ a problem," he told her, thinking back on his own struggles with booze and drugs.

"Is that the voice of experience speaking there?" she asked.

"Clean and sober for five years. Gave up the cigarettes as well, so gourmet coffee's my only vice now," he said, saluting her with his massive mug.

Her expression softened, becoming almost tender and kind. "That's wonderful, Zane. Really. It can't have been easy to kick the habit. It must have taken a _lot_ of guts."

"Guts, and realizing I needed to get my life together and become someone better than who I was."

"For Ty."

"For Ty, yeah, but also for me as well. Got kinda tired of looking at myself in the mirror and not really liking what I saw."

"The experts _are_ always telling us we can't change another person, no matter how hard we try. The other person has to actively _want_ to change."

There was something more to the way she said it than just a profiler's concern.

"Is that where you're at right now, Serena?" he asked as gently as he could. "Trying to decide if you truly want to change?"

"You could say that, yes."

"Anything in particular trigger that? I’m not a therapist, or really even a friend, but for old times' sake, I'm willing to listen, if you need a supportive ear."

She gave him a wan smile. "A whole series of things, actually. A year ago, I blew a really high-profile case, which meant I didn't get the promotion I'd been working towards for a couple of years."

"Sucks when that happens, doesn't it?"

"Wouldn't have been so bad, except they gave the promotion to someone I..." She paused, looked down then met his eyes. "Someone I had previously treated _very_ poorly."

"And you learned the hard way that karma's a raging bitch."

She barked out a laugh. "That's one way to put it, yes."

"I get the feeling your series of problems didn't end there."

"They didn't, no. Three months after the promotion debacle, I caught Robert in bed with a woman I considered a friend."

Zane winced. "Ouch."

She gave a philosophical shrug. "We'd been faking it for a long time, and since I caught _him_ cheating on _me_ , he didn't get much of my money in the divorce, even without a pre-nup clause."

There was the Serena he remembered—thinking about her trust fund first, with her personal relationships a distant second. Although, she _did_ have a mountain of money to worry about, thanks to her steel company heiress mother and the absence of sisters or brothers.

"So you're single again?" was what he asked.

"Very."

She tried to look relieved as she said it, but he wasn't convinced.

"Is that a good thing?"

"Would be better if I still had some friends. Robert didn't get much of my money, but he took most of my social circle instead." Her expression hardened. "Or rather, Diana did."

Diana must be the ex-BFF.

"It seems to be a lot harder to make new friends when you're in your forties," Serena observed.

That was his experience as well. "People in their forties have more established and grounded lives, less room and need for new additions than younger folks."

"Especially when the new addition has a reputation for being a bitch."

"That why you're buying the book?"

"I don't have all the answers yet, but I know I haven't always been the nicest or kindest person, and I don't want 'bitch' to be the only word that comes to mind whenever people mention my name."

He glanced down at the laptop screen. "Looks like we have it, so you're in luck. You want a hardback or paperback copy?"

"Paperback's fine. Easier to read on a plane."

"You in town for long?"

"A couple of days. The Baltimore office has asked for my input on a difficult case. Flew in on the red eye last night."

"The guy who's been kidnapping the kids?" He'd seen the Amber Alerts on the news.

"That one, yes." She huffed out a frustrated sigh. "He's a piece of work, whoever he is. Giving us all a very good run for our money."

"Say hi to Clancy for us." Assuming someone as smart as Clancy would give Serena the time of day.

From out of nowhere, Ty appeared, bearing a bagel-loaded plate. He plucked a half from one side of the pile, then handed the tray to his spouse. "Cream cheese on the right, butter on the left."

Zane extracted a buttered slice. "Serena here was just telling me what's been going on in her life since the three of us were last together."

"Oh, yeah?" Ty asked, almost but not quite managing to sound like he cared. He furrowed his brows as he chewed. "When was that anyway?"

"The Tri-State Killer case back in October oh-eight," Serena helpfully volunteered.

"Right," Ty said, nodding as he slipped onto one of the counter stools. "The restaurant in Chinatown." His face broke into a wicked grin. "If memory serves, you threw the mother of all hissy fits before we'd even ordered the food."

"At least I never threw a hissy fit at work because somebody stole my slice of pie from the fridge," Serena shot back, showing some of her old fire.

Zane looked at his husband askance.

"It was a slice of my mom's pie," Ty said defensively. "One of the best she'd ever made. Baked with blueberries and a whole lotta love."

"Did you ever find out who took it?"

"No."

"You know, when I left the restaurant that night, I made a bet with myself about how long it would be before the two of you tried to kill each other," Serena revealed.

"Seven hours," Zane glibly replied.

Ty snorted around a mouthful of cream cheese and bread.

Serena raised a manicured brow. "Seven hours? So later that night?"

Zane nodded. "Tried to beat the shit out of each other in an alley behind our hotel."

"How did it end?"

"I kicked his ass," Ty proudly proclaimed.

"In your dreams, Meow Mix."

"Meow Mix?" Serena repeated.

"One of my many nicknames for Ty," Zane said. "Long story involving hillbillies and a very angry mountain lion."

Serena looked from one former agent to the other, searching for evidence they were pulling her leg. Not finding any, she simply said, "You boys have obviously had a _very_ interesting last eight years."

Ty shrugged. "You could say that, yeah."

"Just don't ask him about the tigers," Zane warned.

"That's right, _don't_ ask me about the tigers," Ty said to the blonde. "We're not gonna fill you in on what the two of us have been up to over a nice dinner with drinks, so don't go getting any ideas. The past is the past, and I've got no bone to pick with you now, but that doesn't mean I want to talk to you, or that I'm gonna friend you on Facebook or Twitter."

Serena smiled and let out a sigh. "Grady, I'd have been disappointed if you'd said anything less. And after all the petty bullshit I put you through when we worked together back in New York, I'm frankly amazed you managed to be so polite."

She turned to Zane. "So, the book?"

"The book, right. Let me go find it for you."

He was back a couple of minutes later, the paperback copy clutched in his hands.

"What do I owe you?" she asked, delving into her burgundy Birkin to pull out a matching purse.

Zane held up a refusing hand. "No charge, it's on the house." He ignored his husband's protesting grunt.

"I thought independent bookstores like this needed every sale they could get?"

"We manage," Zane said with a shrug, thinking of his own family's money as well as their CIA pay.

She hesitated for a moment before cautiously accepting the book. "That's very generous of you, Zane, thank you," she said, still sounding completely sincere.

"You're very welcome, and I hope it helps. If there's one thing Ty and I both know, it's that it's never too late to learn to be a better person."

Whatever your definition of 'better' was.

She stared at the book for a moment, stroking the cover with her thumb, then carefully placed it in her bag. "It was great to see you again, Garrett," she said. Her lips twitched as she turned to Ty. "You found someone willing to put up with you, Grady. Good for you. Now be a dear, and don't fuck it up."

Ty slapped the counter with his hand. "Now _there's_ the raging harpy I know and love."

She sneered and haughtily flicked her hair. "I may be down, Ty, but I'm not out. I know I need to be less of a bitch, but that doesn't mean I'll ever be willing to tolerate fools or set myself on fire to keep unimportant people warm." She hitched her handbag onto her elbow and graced them with an angelic smile. "You boys take care of yourselves, okay? Stay safe, be happy, try not to kill each other more than once a month, and don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Her witty departing sermon delivered, she turned on her six hundred dollar heels and confidently strode to the door.

They kept their silence until she was gone.

"Well," Ty dramatically said.

Zane nodded. "Did _not_ see that coming when I got out of bed this morning."

"If you had, would you even have gotten out of bed?"

"Not a fucking chance. Would have faked my own death and asked Catherine to cover for me. She doesn't take shit from anyone, especially not ice-cold bitches like Serena."

Ty grinned. "Catherine would put up with her for about twenty minutes, then gut her and eat her with some fava beans and a nice Chianti."

"We _do_ live in Baltimore," Zane pointed out. "Hannibal Lecter's prowling ground." He furrowed his brows. "And speaking of prowling grounds, you never _did_ tell me the full story of the year you spent in New York."

"I didn't, no," Ty acknowledged. He plucked a second bagel half from the plate.

"Any particular reason for that?"

Ty shook his head. "Just never felt there was any point in bringing it up. Like I said to Serena, it's in the past, what's done is done."

"That good, huh?"

"Not about being good or bad. Just think talking about it's a waste of time. Would rather concentrate on my future here with you and the kitties instead."

"I can get behind that."

"But I swear to God, Garrett, there better be no more of these little, blast from the past surprises," Ty warned, gesturing after their vanished guest. "If I come into work tomorrow, and Liam's here looking for a copy of _Your Erroneous Zones_ or _Who Moved My Cheese_ , you're all gonna need to know how to heal your life and what colour your parachute is, because then I'll have to lose my shit, and _not_ in an amusing way."


End file.
